Tony Fras­er

Austin "Jack" Warn­er has made the cross­ing over the po­lit­i­cal, eth­nic, racial and ge­o­graph­ic Ru­bi­con-from the east-west cor­ri­dor to Ca­roni-and has done so in spec­tac­u­lar fash­ion. With­out the en­dorse­ment of the hi­er­ar­chy of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, in­deed, against its wish­es, Warn­er saun­tered in­to the heart­land of the UNC to cap­ture the chair­man­ship of the par­ty and by an ex­tra­or­di­nar­i­ly wide mar­gin-12,695 to 656 votes.

Warn­er has made the po­lit­i­cal cross­ing on his own steam and this is un­like on the two oc­ca­sions when he won the Ch­agua­nas West con­stituen­cy and the chair­man­ship (once) un­der the spon­sor­ship of Pan­day and Per­sad-Bisses­sar. On the week­end, he de­fied the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate and its ob­vi­ous can­di­date, Ash­vani Ma­habir (who was re­al­ly a po­lit­i­cal pawn) and cap­tured the sup­port of the vot­ing UNC mem­ber­ship, as he boast­ed dur­ing the cam­paign he would do.

The hi­er­ar­chy could not have owned-up to sup­port­ing Ma­habir as de­feat would have re­flect­ed di­rect­ly and neg­a­tive­ly on it, in­clu­sive of the po­lit­i­cal leader, Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar. More­over, to give sup­port to Ma­habir would have made Neemakarams out of the po­lit­i­cal leader and the Na­tion­al­ists for op­pos­ing the man who more than any sin­gle in­di­vid­ual was re­spon­si­ble for the par­ty and the coali­tion suc­cess­ful­ly com­ing to­geth­er in 2010. To have turned back on Jack would have had neg­a­tive con­se­quences with­in the UNC and coali­tion.

How­ev­er, the point needs to be made that Warn­er has not slain the drag­on of race, just made some space for him­self. Ques­tion is though: what are the fac­tors that al­lowed Warn­er, a high­ly con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, to make such a break­through in a T&T po­lit­i­cal cul­ture that is solid­ly ground­ed in race, eth­nic­i­ty, even in ge­og­ra­phy?

First, Jack Warn­er has shown him­self to be the kind of peo­ple's rep­re­sen­ta­tive that in­di­vid­ual and na­tion­al con­stituen­cies al­ways hope they would have. In­side and out­side of elec­tion­eer­ing sea­sons, Warn­er has demon­strat­ed deep in­ter­est in the wel­fare of peo­ple; his sup­port­ers vot­ed for him in a man­ner that says they are sure that he has brought en­hance­ment to their lives.

It must al­so mean some­thing to his sup­port­ers that Warn­er has stood with them in the face of at times hos­tile com­ment and ac­tion from what in po­lit­i­cal terms would be de­scribed as his "nat­ur­al con­stituen­cy," that of Afro-Tri­ni-dad, among whom would be those who be­lieve that he had no busi­ness be­ing so im­mersed in the In­do-Trinidad com­mu­ni­ty.

His demon­strat­ed loy­al­ty to the UNC, notwith­stand­ing the very open con­flict he has had with the hi­er­ar­chy of the par­ty and Gov­ern­ment, has been tak­en as his in­ten­tion to save the par­ty and Gov- ern­ment from frac­tur­ing along its po­lit­i­cal fault lines. Be­yond those very prac­ti­cal acts of car­ing and as­sis­tance, Warn­er's back­ing of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to suc­cess­ful­ly oust Pan­day from the lead­er­ship of the UNC and to even­tu­al­ly cap­ture the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion and re­trieve the par­ty from an­oth­er long stint in op­po­si­tion, is re­mem­bered in the UNC com­mu­ni­ty.

Dur­ing the cam­paign Warn­er con­stant­ly re­mind­ed his sup­port­ers and oth­ers of that con­tri­bu­tion to the UNC and PP Gov­ern­ment. Very sig­nif­i­cant­ly, too, the UNC vot­ers sep­a­rat­ed their re­li­gious be­liefs and prac­tices from their pol­i­tics and ig­nored com­plete­ly the at­tempt by the sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Ma­ha Sab­ha, Sat Ma­haraj, to in­flu­ence them to vote for Ma­habir.

As gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, Warn­er must have im­pressed the UNC mem­ber­ship with the sev­er­al ac­tions he has ini­ti­at­ed to spread gov­ern­ment in­fra­struc­ture out­side of Port-of-Spain and in­to places such as Ch­agua­nas. In do­ing so, Warn­er must have been seen to be re­bal­anc­ing what the UNC con­sid­ers to have been decades of ne­glect and dis­crim­i­na­tion against towns and vil­lages in which In­do-Trinidad pre­dom­i­nates.

The UNC sup­port base has al­so been will­ing to re­main faith­ful to Warn­er, notwith­stand­ing the moun­tain of al­le­ga­tions made against him dur­ing the decades that he has held very se­nior po­si­tions in the world foot­ball body, Fi­fa. As is well known, those al­le­ga­tions in­clude that he had worked in tan­dem with Mo­ham-med bin Ham­mam to per­suade the Caribbean Foot­ball Union mem­bers, con­trary to Fi­fa reg­u­la­tions, to vote against Fi­fa pres­i­dent, Sepp Blat­ter.

His sup­port base with­in the UNC has ob­vi­ous­ly tak­en the de­ci­sion that what­ev­er Warn­er is al­leged to have done in his Fi­fa po­si­tions had no re­la­tion to them and their wel­fare. And they had the guid­ance of their po­lit­i­cal leader and prime min­is­ter as she adopt­ed a sim­i­lar po­si­tion-that was per­haps an un­wit­ting pro­vi­sion of an en­dorse­ment of Warn­er as be­ing fit to hold high of­fice with­in par­ty and gov­ern­ment.

So whether or not mem­bers of the core lead­er­ship of the par­ty and Gov­ern­ment may wish to rid them­selves of Warn­er, the elec­tion re­sults have sig­nalled to them that they have to live with him. Notwith­stand­ing that re­al­i­ty, there are un­doubt­ed­ly those who are still hop­ing for some ex­ter­nal dis­as­ter to crip­ple Warn­er-have him fall on his sword, per­haps-as a means of get­ting rid of him.

But with a gen­er­al elec­tion sched­uled to be con­test­ed in two and a half years, the UNC's po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship has the choice of mak­ing-up with Jack or run the po­lit­i­cal risk of not hav­ing his cam­paign­ing abil­i­ty and his re­sources. Fact is, hard­core UNC has not been able to win with­out the or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cam­paign sup­port of the likes of Warn­er, Ramesh Ma­haraj and the coali­tion of par­ties which came to­geth­er in 2010.

Warn­er, on the oth­er hand, has open­ly ex­pressed his sup­port and be­lief in the par­ty and the Prime Min­is­ter; he can­not be seen to be go­ing back on that com­mit­ment. The very poor vot­er turnout, es­ti­mat­ed at 20 per cent and the glar­ing in­ad­e­qua­cies of the elec­toral sys­tem are not sur­pris­ing. They are in­dica­tive of the na­ture of the UNC: a po­lit­i­cal base or­gan­ised to sup­port a max­i­mum leader and to sub­serve the in­ter­est of a tribe.

Warn­er's ever­last­ing con­tri­bu­tion to the UNC and to the po­lit­i­cal par­ty cul­ture would be if he con­ceives of the val­ue of mov­ing the UNC be­yond the mes­sian­ic lead­er­ship mod­el, which gives pow­er to a leader and an in­ner cir­cle who ma­nip­u­late the sup­port base for their ben­e­fit. That is sure­ly one way to slay the drag­on of race-based pol­i­tics.